English prisoners at work near Doberitz circa 1914 to 1915 (Image: Getty Images)
Before signing up to fight for his country in the First World War, William Lonsdale was a humble tram conductor in his home city of Leeds. By 1919, when the British soldier finally returned home to north-west England, he was an international hero with a quashed death sentence and personal pardon from the German Kaiser.
His incredible but almost forgotten story can now be told comprehensively for the first time – some of it in his own words – thanks to newly digitised historical news pages from the Daily Express courtesy of online genealogy service Findmypast.
Revealed as part of today’s Remembrance commemorations in honour of the duty and sacrifice of those who fought to protect our freedoms, it reminds us of the continued need to tell such stories – and how this paper, with its strong tradition of campaigning, helped to save one brave soldier caught up in the machinations of war.
William Lonsdale from Burmantofts, Leeds, was born on February 3, 1885. He married Ethel Mansell in 1909, with whom he had two children; Lily, born one year later, and Henry, in 1912.
He began service in the Territorial Force in 1903 where he was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment aged 21.
When war broke out, like millions of other British men, Lonsdale was called up for active service and sent to France. But just a month later, he was captured during intensive fighting at Mons, Belgium, and transported to the German Prisoner of War camp of Döberitz near Berlin. Döberitz was among the worst PoW camps for Allied captives who suffered beatings, unsanitary conditions, overcrowding and inadequate rations.
The strict German guards were known for their savagery.
William Lonsdale, his children Lily and Henry, and wife Ethel (Image: Reach Plc)
And, on one fateful day, Private Lonsdale was goaded into violence after German guards lashed out when 250 PoWs failed to assemble quick enough.
Reports from papers including the Express stated that a German Sergeant-Major hit Private Lonsdale with the butt of his rifle. He struck the guard back in response and was tried by court martial. He was sentenced to 10 years of hard labour at a first trial in Berlin on December 1 but the outcome of a second hearing, held on December 30, sentenced him to death. By all accounts, it was an outcome as astonishing as it was devastating, considering the attacked officer in question was unharmed and even Germans publicly decried the sentence as “savage”.
On January 4, 1915, the Daily Express ran a prominent article headlined APPEAL FOR A LIFE, noting how Leeds citizens were “much distressed” by the capture of one of their own. It detailed the significant diplomacy enacted on the part of the Mayor of Leeds, Lord Mayor Mr James E Bedford, and US ambassador in the Netherlands, Henry Van Dyke, to save Private Lonsdale’s life.
Van Dyke escalated Private Lonsdale’s case to the US Ambassador in Berlin in the hope of pressuring the Imperial government to drop the case.
As reported in the Express at the time, Mrs Lonsdale “expressed her gratitude and delight on hearing of the steps that are being taken to save her husband’s life”.
The paper carried portraits of the moustachioed and suave-looking William, who also went by the nicknames Willie and, later, Bill, alongside his wife and two young children.
Readers understandably were horrified by his treatment.
The soldier’s situation by now had made headlines across the world, highlighting the inhumane conditions and harsh treatment at certain PoW German camps.
Increasingly, Private Lonsdale looked to be a pawn whose extreme sentence worked in the favour of the Germans to suppress British captives by breaking their morale, and deterring new army recruits from enlisting. On April 30, 1915, the Express reported Private Lonsdale’s case had been considered once more by the First Senate of the Imperial Court in Berlin, with an eye to reviewing the sentence of death. But the President, Herr Thiellmann, announced the judgment as follows: “It is beyond doubt that the accused committed a grave excess against a military superior in the presence of the assembled rank and file…
“The superior military court, in view of the gravity of the excesses and circumstance that the accused acted in full consciousness, rejected the plea advanced that the case was not of the most serious nature, and pronounced sentence of death.”
The sentence required the confirmation of the Kaiser himself before it could be carried out.
Mrs Lonsdale was reported as being “prostrated with grief on hearing the outcome of the appeal, and broke down completely on learning of the inhumane decision of the German Court of Appeal”.
In July, a published letter written by William to his beloved Ethel, appeared to show his sentence had been redacted to 15 years of imprisonment. But his sentiments reveal he was as equally perplexed and perturbed by his harsh treatment as those fighting for his release. “My 15 years will soon pass away; only another 770 Sundays. Not many. I only count the Sundays; I have no time to trouble about the weekdays – too busy worrying,” he wrote.
“Kiss my children for me, and never let them know that their father is such a bad man that he is doing 15 years for striking a blow in self-defence.”
Despite the private’s case having now been heard across the world, justice was slow. Lonsdale was moved from Döberitz to Festung Spandau, where he was held in solitary confinement until August 2, 1917, and was shifted around other camps around the German capital.
One account stated he was ordered to collect unloaded rubbish from Berlin’s streets but so hated the smell that after one month he refused to continue the work. He is then said to have escaped out of Botzow, the camp where he was then detained, and with the aid of a compass and other escapees, travelled 15 miles to Dyrotz. The same account says the men expected to be thrown in the cells on arrival but were taken to the barrack room whereupon, after a range of further appeals, Private Lonsdale was pardoned by order of the Kaiser and finally freed.
He returned home to his family on Saturday, January 4, 1919, as reported in the Express, which said he had arrived in Leith on Thursday, was now in Ripon, and expected to be home in Leeds later that day. Somewhat amusingly, and perhaps an indication of the soldier’s huge relief at being freed, he showed no ill-will towards his captors.
This paper reported: “He states that on the whole the Germans treated him kindly, and he was for long the only prisoner in Germany receiving double rations, which were granted him on the recommendation of a doctor.”
William II, German Emperor, at the beginning of the First World War (Image: Bettmann Archive)
However, a Daily Express correspondent who interviewed William about his extraordinary experience 25 years later during the Second World War on January 3, 1940, discovered he had twice been taken before a firing squad during his early days of captivity.
On January 1, 1915, he was “put against a wall in a prison yard to face a firing squad. Just before he was about to be blindfolded an officer spoke to the sergeant in charge and Private Lonsdale was sent back to his cell”.Unbelievably, the exact same thing happened the very next morning.
Reflecting on those terrible moments, Lonsdale said: “Each time I felt quite resigned to death. I still don’t know whether they were genuine last-minute reprieves or merely a scheme to break my spirit when my appeal was pending.”
The fact that he then goes on to reveal that it was the Kaiser himself who eventually gave the orders for his release in 1918, four years after his captivity, suggests he may well have been some political pawn.
Private Lonsdale’s story is another powerful reminder of the huge debt we owe to the millions of ordinary civilians whose lives or hopes and dreams were sacrificed to allow us to live free and safe lives today.
After returning to his family home, William no longer worked as a tram conductor. He became a postman, perhaps seeking a quieter, more peaceful way of living after his horrific ordeal.
Ethel died in 1929 at the age of just 44 years old of uterine cancer, with her daughter Lily at her side. In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the widowed William was living at 1 Edward Street in Leeds, with a housekeeper, Hilda.
He died in his hometown seven years later in 1946 of carcinoma of the bile duct. He was undoubtedly a hero. Lest we forget.
Now find your family hero
Archive experts Findmypast are offering readers free access to its digital archive until midnight on Remembrance Day to help people uncover their military ancestors. The exclusive 1921 Census will be available to read for free for the first time too.
The offer comes as research reveals that 1.18 million wartime stories are at risk of being forgotten, with a staggering 64% of Britons admitting they haven’t researched an ancestor who served.
Findmypast has also digitised the Daily Express and Sunday Express’ back catalogue from 1900 to 1999, including some 12.7 million pages.
● Learn more by visiting findmypast.co.uk
